A polo is a collar with a shirt attached. This ranking scores the collar first, and prints what each one is made of.
Checked and updated October 2026
The verdict, up front: seven polo shirts scored out of 100 on the polo basis this page publishes: cloth and knit 30, collar and construction 20, fit range 20, value 15, longevity 15. The Lacoste L.12.12 Original wins at 85, the 1933 petit piqué that invented the category, at $115. The Asket Merino Wool Polo is second at 83, a fully knitted polo with the field's best size system. And the fast-fashion piqué is sent home at 35: at about $20 it is the most expensive polo on this page per presentable wear, because its collar gives up inside a single season. Every collar build below is printed, maker's figure against class figure, and the cost-per-wear table is in the open.
The collar is the garment
Our shirt index files the polo at formality two, smart casual's floor, and prints its law in one line: a polo stands or falls on whether the collar still stands at 4pm. That is the whole category. The body of a polo is a knitted tube, hard to ruin and harder to distinguish; the collar is where every maker spends or saves, and it is where every polo eventually retires. A collar knitted as part of the garment cannot roll away from it. A dense ribbed band on a real piqué holds for seasons. A light band sewn onto a thin body starts curling before the summer ends, and no ironing schedule argues with construction. This ranking reads the collar first, then the cloth it is attached to.
Every score below is built from the makers' published specifications and checked US prices under our published methodology. Where a maker publishes its cloth and collar build, the table on this page prints that figure and marks it. Where it does not, the table prints the desk's figure for the class and marks that instead. How each polo is worn, tucked, layered and kept out of the rooms it cannot enter is ruled on in How to Wear No. 06.
How the scores work
Five rows, printed here so the scores can be argued with. Cloth and knit judges the fabric class itself: piqué, mesh, or a fully knitted gauge, its fibre, its weight in the hand, whether it breathes and holds colour. Collar and construction judges the make at the neck: how the collar is built, whether it will stand in year two, the placket and its buttons. Fit range judges the size run and the cuts offered, lengths included where they exist. Value divides what you get by the US price, against the whole field. Longevity estimates presentable service, counted at the collar and the colour, not at the seams. The rows sum to the score.
Seven polo shirts, ranked
Lacoste L.12.12 Original Polo Shirt
US price at last check: $115 at the maker's store.
The call: the original, scored like everything else and still standing at the top. René Lacoste put this shirt on sale in 1933, and the specification has barely moved since: a cotton petit piqué, a ribbed collar and ribbed cuffs, a two-button placket, and the crocodile the maker counts at 2,367 stitches. The piqué is the category's reference cloth, textured, breathable, with enough body to hold the collar it carries, and the collar itself is the point: dense, even, and still upright at the end of the day in year three, which is the test the shirt index prints. Three fits, classic, slim and regular, cover most bodies, though there are no lengths and the sizing runs small enough that the maker itself advises going up when between sizes. At $115 it is priced at the category's centre, and it wins the way the reference usually does on this site: no row is the field's best except the one that matters, and no row is weak.
Asket The Merino Wool Polo
US price at last check: $180 at the maker's store.
The call: the polo rebuilt as knitwear, from the house that scores 92 as a brand in our Scandinavian ranking. This is a fully knitted polo in extra-fine merino at a dense 24 gauge, traceable under the NATIVA programme, knitted and linked in Romania, with a cutaway collar that sits the way a shirt collar sits and tonal mother-of-pearl buttons. The collar is part of the garment rather than a band sewn onto it, so the curl failure that ends most polos has nowhere to start. The fit row is the field's only perfect score, and it is not close: sizes run across three lengths, a grid built from body measurements, the same system that won its sweater the fit row on our crew-neck ranking. What it gives back is register and price. A merino polo is an autumn-weight, dressed object, not the summer piqué the category is named for, and at $180 the value row pays for the size grid and the yarn, fairly, without pretending either is free.
John Smedley Isis Polo Shirt
US prices at last check: typically $250 to $300 at US retail.
The call: the best cloth and the best collar on this page, and the third-best buy, which is the luxury argument in one line. The Isis is knitted in England from Sea Island cotton, the long-staple fibre the house has built its name on, in a style it dates to the 1930s: a fashioned collar formed as the garment is knitted, a three-button placket, an easy fit. The construction row is the field's highest because there is nothing to separate: collar, placket and body are one knitted object, and the longevity row is at full marks because these are the polos that get handed down rather than replaced. What it concedes is everything around the cloth. One easy fit, a standard size run, no lengths, and a US price that lands between $250 and $300 buys the finest version of the garment rather than the most useful one. The same house's Lundy crew neck won our crew-neck ranking at 87; here the cloth wins its rows and the price wins the argument against it.
Ralph Lauren Iconic Mesh Polo Shirt
US price at last check: $118 at the maker's store.
The call: the other inventor, and the more complicated inheritance. The mesh polo, a cotton knit in the piqué family with a more open hand, has been an American standard since 1972: ribbed collar, two-button placket, ribbed armbands, and the tennis tail, a back hem cut longer than the front so the shirt stays tucked through a swing. The fit range is genuinely the widest here, classic, custom slim and slim cuts with a big and tall line above them, and the collar is a proper ribbed build that outlasts most of the field. The deductions are the known ones. The cloth is a standard cotton mesh, good rather than fine, and it thins and fades at the shoulders across the years; and part of the $118 buys the pony, which is a branding fact this page scores rather than celebrates: the house behind it keeps a 70 as a brand in our Brands Like ranking, docked there on value. Bought in navy or white with the small pony, it is still the easiest polo in America to wear well. Bought with the billboard chest logo, it is a mistake our wearing brief names.
Uniqlo DRY Piqué Polo Shirt
US price at last check: $29.90 at the maker's store.
The call: the honest budget entry, from the brand that scores 84 in our Japanese ranking and finishes second on its own Brands Like page on exactly this virtue. The DRY piqué is a cotton-rich blend knit with recycled polyester spun in for the maker's quick-dry finish: a lighter, flatter piqué than the heritage cloth, and the cloth row says so. What the rows also say is a perfect value score and a size run from XXS to 3XL that only the winner's stablemate system beats, because at $29.90 nothing is being pretended. The collar is a standard ribbed band, better than the mall's and thinner than the heritage tier's, and the honest costing is about seventy presentable wears before it softens at the edges. Buy two in navy and white and rotate them, and the cost-per-wear table below shows the arithmetic beating polos at four times the price.
J.Crew Performance Piqué Polo Shirt
US price at last check: $79.50 at the maker's store, usually promoted.
The call: the mall's answer, built for the golf register and scored in the wardrobe one. J.Crew's performance piqué is a cotton-blend knit with stretch and a quick-dry finish, cut in classic, slim and tall fits with an untucked length beside them, and the fit row respects the range. The cloth row is where the register costs it: a performance knit reads athletic in the hand and slightly synthetic in the light, which is a virtue on a course and a deduction in the rooms this ranking dresses for, and the collar is a light ribbed band that starts negotiating with the dryer inside two seasons. The value row is the complicated one. At the $79.50 list it is mid-field; at the promoted prices it actually sells for, it is the cheapest respectable polo here, and the house's habit of never charging list is scored as the reader experiences it, half credit, with the table below run at list so the maths stays honest. The house scores 73 as a brand in our Ralph Lauren ranking; this garment lands below its brand, which is the mall polo story in one line.
H&M Cotton Piqué Polo Shirt
US prices at last check: typically $15 to $25.
The call: the collar that gives up. A thin cotton piqué at the bottom of the weight class, with a light ribbed collar that arrives soft and starts rolling at the edges inside a season, on a body that fades unevenly at the shoulders and twists at the hem. It is the eighth garment from this house to stand in one of our rankings, and the pattern is the one its predecessors set: the Oxford at 41, the chinos at 48, the overshirt at 33, the flannel at 38, the roll neck at 44, the crew neck at 40 and the jeans at 36. The polo version of the method is the cruellest, because a polo's whole job is its collar, and this is the one garment here whose collar cannot be trusted past the summer. The cost-per-wear table prices it: at roughly twenty presentable wears, the cheapest polo on the rail is the most expensive polo on the page.
The cloth and collar table
A polo ranking that hides its inputs is a mood board, so the builds stand together here. A maker's figure is the cloth and collar construction the maker publishes. A class figure is the desk's figure for that cloth class, printed where the maker does not publish one, and marked as what it is.
| Polo | Cloth | Collar build | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lacoste L.12.12 Original | Cotton petit piqué | Ribbed collar, two-button placket | Maker's figure |
| Asket Merino Wool Polo | Extra-fine merino, 24-gauge knit | Knitted cutaway collar, mother-of-pearl buttons | Maker's figure |
| John Smedley Isis | Sea Island cotton, fine-gauge knit | Fashioned collar knitted in, three-button placket | Maker's figure |
| Ralph Lauren Iconic Mesh | Cotton mesh, piqué family | Ribbed collar, two-button placket, tennis tail | Maker's figure |
| Uniqlo DRY Piqué | Cotton and recycled polyester piqué | Ribbed collar | Maker's figure |
| J.Crew Performance Piqué | Cotton-blend performance piqué | Ribbed collar, light build | Class figure |
| H&M Cotton Piqué | Cotton piqué, thin gauge | Ribbed collar, light build | Class figure |
Read the table against the ladder and the category's rule falls out. The two collars knitted into their garments finish second and third overall and take the construction row between them. Every sewn ribbed band is ranked by its density, and the two light builds finish last. The fourth cloth class, smooth jersey, places nobody here: it is the softest hand in the family and the weakest collar platform, a t-shirt's cloth asked to hold a shirt's furniture, and the seven above are the ones that kept their structure.
What each polo costs per wear
The maths, assumptions printed. A polo in a working rotation is worn about 40 times a year, twice a week across the warm half of the year and the shoulder seasons. Life is counted in presentable wears, the wears before the collar curls or the colour fades past wearing, estimated from the construction class rather than the price tag. Where a price is a band, the table uses its middle and says so here: $275 for the Smedley, $20 for the H&M. The J.Crew is costed at its $79.50 list; at its usual promoted price its figure roughly halves, which its card says out loud. These are the data team's estimates, published so you can argue with them.
| Polo | Price | Presentable wears | Cost per wear |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uniqlo DRY Piqué | $29.90 | About 70 | $0.43 |
| Lacoste L.12.12 Original | $115 | About 240 | $0.48 |
| J.Crew Performance Piqué | $79.50 | About 100 | $0.80 |
| Ralph Lauren Iconic Mesh | $118 | About 140 | $0.84 |
| Asket Merino Wool Polo | $180 | About 200 | $0.90 |
| John Smedley Isis | About $275 | About 280 | $0.98 |
| H&M Cotton Piqué | About $20 | About 20 | $1.00 |
The table's shape is the category in miniature. The winner is nearly the cheapest way to wear a polo, at forty-eight cents a time across six seasons, beaten only by the budget entry whose honesty about its own lifespan is its whole appeal. The ceiling, the finest cloth here, amortises to ninety-eight cents because two hundred and eighty careful wears is a long denominator that still cannot outrun its price. And the twenty-dollar polo is the most expensive on the page at a dollar a wear, because its denominator is a single summer. In polos, as in every category this site scores, the collar is bought once or it is bought every year.
The Skip · 35/100
The H&M cotton piqué polo, typically $15 to $25 in the US, is this ranking's named loser, and it loses on the category's defining test: the collar. A polo is a collar with a shirt attached, and this collar, a light ribbed band on a thin piqué, starts rolling at its edges inside a season, which retires the garment while its body still has years in it. The cost-per-wear table prices the trick at a dollar a presentable wear, the highest figure here, above even the Sea Island ceiling. Spend the $29.90 on the honest budget polo, or the $115 once on the original. The first polo a man buys teaches him what the garment is. This one teaches him it is disposable, and charges him the most per wear on the page for the lesson.
Which one to buy
If you buy one: the Lacoste, in navy or white, a size up if you are between sizes as the maker advises, and wear it for the six seasons. If you want the dressed end: the Asket merino, the polo that goes under a blazer and into the evening rows of the wearing brief. If you want the finest cloth: the Smedley, bought as the decade garment its price assumes. If the pony is the point: the Ralph Lauren, small logo only, in a dark colour that hides the shoulder fade the longest. If the budget is the whole story: the Uniqlo, two of them, rotated, over the skip at the same money. Where the polo sits among the twelve shirts a wardrobe actually needs is indexed in types of shirts; the torso it covers, dressed by this site's winning tee and Oxford, is mapped in the Body Map.
Questions, answered
What is the best polo shirt for men?
The Lacoste L.12.12 Original, scored 85 out of 100. It is the garment that invented the category in 1933, a cotton petit piqué with a ribbed collar that still stands at the end of the day, in three fits, at $115. The Asket Merino Wool Polo at 83 is the finer cloth and the better size system. The original wins because it is the polo the rest of this page is measured against, and at $115 it is priced like one.
What is the difference between piqué, mesh and knitted polo cloth?
Piqué is a textured cotton knit with a raised, breathable weave: the category's default, structured enough to hold a collar. Mesh is its open, airier relative, the cloth Ralph Lauren built its polo on and the warm-weather end of the family. A fully knitted polo is made like a fine sweater, collar knitted in rather than sewn on, and it is the dressed end of the category: smoother, softer, and the only class that sits quietly under a blazer. Jersey, the smooth t-shirt cloth, is the fourth class and the softest; none of the seven here is jersey, because a jersey polo gives up the structure the collar needs.
Why does a polo collar curl, and how do you stop it?
A collar curls when it is a light ribbed band sewn onto a heavier body, or when the knit itself is too thin to hold an edge: the band dries, shrinks and rolls toward its weaker side, wash by wash. The defences are construction, not ironing. A collar knitted as part of the garment, as on the two knit polos here, has nothing to roll away from. A dense ribbed collar on a substantial piqué, as on the winner, holds for seasons. And the care is part of it: wash cold, dry flat or on the line, and never leave a polo in a hot dryer, which is where collars go to curl.
How long should a polo shirt last?
Counted in presentable wears, the wears before the collar or the colour gives up: the heritage piqué at the top of this page is costed at about 240, the fully knitted ceiling at about 280 with careful washing, the honest budget entry at about 70, and the named skip at about 20, which is why the cheapest polo here is the most expensive per wear. A polo rarely wears out in the body. It retires at the collar, which is why this ranking scores collar construction out of twenty and reads it first.
Can you wear a polo shirt under a blazer?
Yes, if it is the right class of polo and the right class of blazer. The polo is a knitted one, fine gauge, its collar sitting like a shirt's; the blazer is unstructured and textured, never a smooth suit jacket. The piqué polo's ribbed collar band doubles up against the lapel and the two argue, so the piqué stays the layer beside tailoring rather than under it. The full ruling, with the outfit matrix, is in How to Wear a Polo Shirt, No. 06 in the series.
Are expensive polo shirts worth it?
The maths on this page says: up to a point, and the point is construction. The $180 knitted merino finishes second and the $115 original wins, while the ceiling, at a $275 midpoint, costs about 98 cents a presentable wear, the second-worst figure here, because you are paying for the finest cotton knitted in England, not for extra years. The clearest value on the page is at the bottom of the price ladder, not the top: the $29.90 budget entry is the cheapest polo to own per wear at about 43 cents. Expensive is worth it when the money is in the collar and the cloth. It is not when the money is in the logo.
How this ranking stays honest
Scores follow our published methodology and are re-checked on the cadence in the byline; when a maker changes cloth, collar construction or price materially, the score moves and the move is noted here. Prices are US list prices at last check from the makers' own stores: the Lacoste, Asket, Ralph Lauren, Uniqlo and J.Crew figures are single list prices; the Smedley and H&M lines price in bands across US retail and the cards print the bands rather than a false precision. Brand scores quoted in the calls are context from this site's brand rankings; every garment score on this page is this page's own work, built on the polo basis printed above.